Infant cribs and their application are well-established. Various modifications to the basic crib design have been proposed in the prior art for providing enhancements, in terms of safety, care and ease of operation. When changing crib bedding (e.g., sheets, mattress pad, etc), as is often required, most crib designs typically allow access to the crib mattress only by reaching over the side rails of the crib. This arrangement is often inconvenient and cumbersome, especially when using padding (e.g., bumpers) or other protection materials around the sides of the crib, which must typically be removed to enable the mattress to be at least partially removed from the crib for changing the crib bedding.
This problem has been inadequately addressed in the prior art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,054,138 to Wesley describes a crib apparatus including a mattress cavity and a mattress that is slidably mounted to the mattress cavity. Access to the mattress is provided through an opening in the mattress cavity that is coextensive with a forward wall (i.e., long dimension) of the crib. This configuration, however, prevents the side rails from being lowered while the mattress is being removed from the crib and is thus undesirable.
Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 5,416,934 to Bracken et al. describes a crib having a mattress frame and mattress that can be pulled outwardly away from the front perimeter (i.e., long dimension) of the crib. Once pulled out, the mattress is exposed, thereby allowing mattress coverings to be more easily changed. However, like the Wesley patent previously discussed, the crib arrangement described by Bracken et al. prevents the side rail which is coextensive with the mattress opening from being lowered once the mattress has been pulled out from the crib.
There exists a need, therefore, for a crib apparatus that allows slidable access to the mattress but does not inhibit the lowering of the side rails once the mattress has been at least partially removed from the crib.